Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made more than $44.3 million in total compensation during the company's last fiscal year, according to an annual securities filing detailing executive pay.

Nadella's compensation, up a little more than 3% from around $42.9 million last year, included $2.5 million in salary, more than $30.7 million in stock awards and nearly $11 million in incentives. The compensation committee, made up of Microsoft board members who decide executive pay, called out strong financial performance for the company despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Under Mr. Nadella's leadership, Microsoft acted early to enable secure, remote work and adopt other measures to protect the health and well-being of our workforce, while ensuring the continuity of our operations for the many organizations that rely on Microsoft products and services to serve their customers or citizens,"the filing states.

The compensation committee evaluates Nadella's performance based on three, equally weighted factors: product and strategy, customers and stakeholders, and culture and organizational leadership. The board gave Nadella the strongest marks on culture and organizational leadership, and scored his overall performance based on the three categories as 146.66% out of a possible 200%.

The filing also gives a window into the product areas Microsoft's board deemed most important. The board awards performance-based stock awards based on weighted factors. At the top of the list was growing commercial cloud revenue to $51.09 billion, which accounted for 35 percent of the goal, followed by growing commercial cloud subscribers by 23.02% (34% of goal), growing Teams chat app monthly active users by 246.94% (10% of goal), plus growing Xbox Game Pass subscribers (7%), Surface revenue (7%), and LinkedIn Sessions (7%).

Microsoft paid chief financial officer Amy Hood more than $19.6 million, president and chief legal officer Brad Smith more than $16.6 million, and global sales, marketing and operations executive vice president Jean-Philippe Courtois nearly $14 million. Microsoft paid former executive vice president of business development Peggy Johnson more than $9.5 million during the fiscal year before she left to become CEO of Magic Leap.

Nadella made 257 times more than the company's median employee, which it said made $172,142. The ratio is slightly higher than the company's previous fiscal year, during which Nadella made 249 times more than median employee.

A Microsoft investor last year asked the company to justify that pay gap, and chairman John Thompson pointed to Microsoft's growing market cap and a cultural change he said Nadella has led within the company.

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Microsoft has adjusted Satya Nadella's compensation to base more of the CEO's pay on whether the company achieves certain goals, like growing its cloud business and Teams chat app, according to the company's annual securities filing released this week.

Now, half of Nadella's compensation will be made up of performance stock awards, which the company's board awards based on whether the company meets certain performance metrics. That's an increase from the previous fiscal year, when performance stock awards accounted for 36% of Nadella's pay.

The change is significant as Microsoft shifts the priorities that determine performance stock awards for executives. The awards are based on metrics such as growing cloud revenue and subscribers, Teams monthly active usage, Xbox Game Pass subscribers, Surface hardware revenue, and LinkedIn user sign-ins. 

Microsoft this year has also adjusted the weight for each of those metrics to make Teams a bigger priority, which RBC Capital Markets analyst Alex Zukin signals "the focus on the product at the highest levels of the company."

Nadella made more than $44.3 million in total compensation during the company's last fiscal year, up a little more than 3% from around $42.9 million in the previous year.

The compensation committee, which decides Nadella's pay, praised his leadership amid the pandemic.

"Under Mr. Nadella's leadership, Microsoft acted early to enable secure, remote work and adopt other measures to protect the health and well-being of our workforce, while ensuring the continuity of our operations for the many organizations that rely on Microsoft products and services to serve their customers or citizens," the filing states.

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SEE ALSO: Microsoft just adjusted executive stock bonuses to prioritize growing the Teams chat app, signaling 'focus on the product at the highest levels of the company'

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Microsoft reported earnings for its fiscal first quarter on Tuesday, exceeding Wall Street revenue and profit expectations.

Here's what the company reported:

• Revenue: $37.2 billion (Wall Street expected $35.72 billion), compared with $33.1 billion in the same quarter last year.
• Earnings: $1.82 per share, compared with analysts' estimate of $1.54 per share.
• Profit: $13.9 billion, up 30% compared with the first quarter 2019.

The company's stock price remained mostly unchanged after the earnings release.

Microsoft's overall commercial cloud business — which includes its Microsoft Azure cloud-computing business and the Microsoft 365 suite of cloud software applications — reached $15.2 billion in sales for the quarter, up 31% compared with the same quarter last year.

Microsoft doesn't report revenue figures for Azure but said revenue grew 48% year over year.

Investors typically pay close attention to growth of the company's cloud-computing business, but there's also increasing interest in its Teams chat app. Microsoft Teams landed a surge of users amid the pandemic, and the company recently signaled the product's growing importance for company leaders.

Microsoft said Teams has reached 115 million daily active users, up from 75 million daily active users in April. 

Microsoft also doesn't break out revenue specific to Teams but said revenue for the overall "Productivity and Business Processes" segment — which also includes Office products for businesses and customers, LinkedIn revenue, and Dynamics products and cloud services — reached $12.3 billion for the quarter, up 11% year over year.

Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud" business, which includes Azure, server products, and enterprise and cloud services, brought in $13 billion in revenue, up 20% compared with the same quarter last year.

And revenue for the business unit Microsoft calls "More Personal Computing," which includes Windows, search, Xbox, and Surface products, was $11.8 billion, up 6% year over year.

Microsoft reported strong sales growth for Xbox and Surface devices, but the company doesn't report specific revenue figures for the products. Xbox revenue was up 30%, highlighting the boom in video gaming amid the pandemic, even as the company prepares to introduce two new models of the Xbox in November. Surface revenue was up 37%.

"The next decade of economic performance for every business will be defined by the speed of their digital transformation," Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, said. "We are innovating across our full modern tech stack to help our customers in every industry improve time to value, increase agility, and reduce costs."

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2020 has been a tumultuous year for Big Tech. The celebrity CEOs from Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, and Apple were in and out of courtrooms for antitrust lawsuits. Microsoft faced extreme competition in the video conferencing space as the world moved to work-from-home setups.

But, we shouldn't feel too bad for the executives leading the biggest tech companies — they earned an average of $27 million in 2019 total reported compensation. 

Business Insider analyzed compensation information from proxy statements to understand the pay structures that the biggest tech firms in the US use. The SEC requires companies to disclose specific compensation data for executives each year, which provide insight into the way firms think about pay. 

The compensation was typically made up of five elements: salary, bonus, cash incentive awards, equity incentive awards, and other compensation. Let's take a deeper look into these massive paydays.

CEO compensation at big tech firms

The CEOs of the US's big tech firms are household names. Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos together earned $360 million in 2019, according to compensation reports from each firm's proxy statement. 

The approach to compensation differed for each executive. Besides Zuckerberg's $1 salary, he received only an allowance of $20 million for personal and family security and for use of the company aircraft. Pichai's salary of $650,000 is overshadowed by the equity award he received of almost $300 million. It's worth noting that Alphabet's executives don't receive equity awards every year, so when awards are granted, they are large and vest (or become available for the executives to use) over the following years. A majority of the equity Pichai received in 2019 vests over 3 years. Bezos' salary was less than $100,000, rare for a CEO. 

At $1.7 million in total reported compensation, Bezos comes in as the lowest earner in 2019 amongst fellow Big Tech CEOs. But don't shed any tears for Mr. Bezos — according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, Bezos is the world's richest person, with a net worth of $190 billion.

In the chart below, we show compensation for each CEO as it was presented in the summary compensation table in each firm's proxy statement, split out by element. Hold your cursor over the labels at the top to highlight the different parts of the executives' compensation, and reference the bulleted list at the end of the article for more information on each compensation element.

Besides the CEOs, other big tech executives are also paid millions

The SEC requirements around compensation data go beyond just what CEOs are paid — they require the disclosure of annual compensation for the CFO and the three otherwise highest-paid executives as well.

Below, we've provided a database of all the executives listed in proxy statements, and each person's compensation data for the big five tech companies. Executives range from CFOs to COOs to heads of businesses. Co-founders are included, as well as legal officers, sub-CEOs, and those in charge of sales or retail. 

The average total reported compensation for these executives in 2019 was $27 million, ranging from $1.00 for both co-founders of Alphabet, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to the current CEO of Alphabet, Pichai, who had total reported compensation of $280.6 million in 2019.

We've compiled this data into a searchable database below. In the table, you can click any title heading to sort (for example, you can click "Salary" to sort the table by salary from low to high, and click it again to sort from high to low). You can also search for a specific executive or company using the search bar. The table also scrolls horizontally. Navigate or scroll to the right to view all available data.  

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Satya Nadella is often credited with leading a grand reinvention of Microsoft into one of the most valuable companies in the world. Microsoft's market capitalization was around $300 billion at the time Nadella took over as CEO in 2014 and has since swelled to about $1.6 trillion.

This transformation may not have been possible without the contributions of Nadella's top lieutenants – from Amy Hood, the chief financial officer who transcends her role in finance and accounting to serve as one of the company's chief business strategists, to Kathleen Hogan, the head of human resources who helped create an employee review system that prioritizes collaboration.

"Satya himself has pulled off a remarkable transformation," Forrester analyst Glenn O'Donnell told Business Insider. "To do that, he needs a stellar team beneath him."

Microsoft's senior leadership team includes 16 executives who the company confirmed report directly to CEO Satya Nadella.

Here are Nadella's direct reports, and the contributions they've made to Microsoft's success, according to experts:

Amy Hood, chief financial officer

Amy Hood's official title is chief financial officer, but her role at Microsoft transcends the company's finance and accounting department, according to analysts. Hood, who joined Microsoft in 2002 as director of investor relations, became CFO in May 2013, less than a year before Satya Nadella became CEO. 

Hood is "one of the key architects of the growth and financial rebirth at Microsoft," according to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives. "Amy is a respected leader internally and externally. She is more than a CFO, she is ubiquitous from a leadership position."

Morningstar analyst Dan Romanoff said Hood has "played a key role in the company's resurgence," including being "instrumental" in Microsoft's acquisitions of Skype and GitHub.

Hood has "reshaped the company into a subscription model with the conception, planning, and implementation of Office 365," Romanoff said. "She has also been at the helm to oversee the rise of Azure, the buildout of the datacenter footprint, and the massive run in the shares. She is truly an excellent CFO."

Brad Smith, president

Brad Smith, the longtime Microsoft lawyer who Satya Nadella promoted to companywide president in 2015, has also played a significant role in the company's transformation.

Smith has helped make Microsoft a more collaborative company, one of the hallmarks of Nadella's time as CEO and has played a key part in Microsoft's ability to forge alliances with former rivals including Oracle,Google, Apple, and VMware.

Nadella "relies on [Smith] heavily" when it comes to making institutional change, according to Horacio Gutierrez, who spoke to Business Insider this summer and worked with Smith at Microsoft for nearly 20 years before taking his current role as Spotify's chief legal officer in 2016.

Wedbush's Ives describes Smith as "a key pillar of the growth strategy" at Microsoft and "immensely respected across the board."

Smith is also the face of Microsoft's public policy efforts, and has taken strong stands on issues including immigration and facial recognition.

Kathleen Hogan, executive vice president of human resources

Kathleen Hogan is Microsoft's chief people officer, which means she runs human resources for the firm's more than 150,000 employees. Hogan has worked for Microsoft in sales and services roles since 2003, but took on her current position in 2015, shortly after Satya Nadella became CEO.

One of the most significant changes in Hogan's time as HR chief has been the replacement of Microsoft's former employee review system called stack ranking, which forced managers to rank workers from one to five in equal measure. No matter how good the team or employee was, someone had to get the lowest score. 

Former CEO Steve Ballmer and Hogan's predecessor Lisa Brummel started dismantling the system in late 2013 and Hogan has since led the creation of a new policy that rewards collaboration.

"What we really value is three dimensions,"Hogan told Business Insider's Shana Lebowitz last year. "One is your own individual impact, the second is how you contributed to others and others' success, and the third is how you leveraged the work of others."

Christopher Young, executive vice president of business development

Christopher Young is Satya Nadella's newest direct report. He joined the company in November as executive vice president of business development, meaning he's in charge of acquisitions and partnerships for the entire company.

Young replaced Peggy Johnson, who left the company earlier this year to become the CEO of Magic Leap.

Young was previously CEO of cybersecurity company McAfee (he left in February) and Microsoft highlighted his experience spinning it out of Intel in his hiring announcement, as well as his previous leadership positions at Cisco, VMware, RSA, and AOL.

"I've known Chris for many years and have admired his accomplishments as a leader, Nadella said in a statement."His experience and skills are an invaluable addition to our company and the senior leadership team."

Young is taking over Microsoft's business development at a time when the company appears to have an appetite for big deals. Microsoft tried to acquire video app TikTok, though the bid ultimately failed, and recently announced plans to pay $7.5 billion for video game publisher Bethesda.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Microsoft Cloud + AI group

As executive vice president Microsoft's cloud and artificial intelligence group, Scott Guthrie heads up one of the company's cornerstones.

"Scott is one of the most important pieces to the cloud success at Microsoft," Wedbush's Ives said. "A cloud visionary."

Guthrie's purview includes Microsoft's Azure public cloud computing business, cloud-based products such as customer relationship management software Dynamics 365, the company's artificial intelligence platform, and coding site GitHub. 

Guthrie joined Microsoft in 1997 and previously ran Azure before being promoted to the head of the newly formed cloud and AI group in 2018.

Microsoft's overall commercial cloud business — which includes its Microsoft Azure cloud-computing business and the Microsoft 365 suite of cloud software applications — reached $15.2 billion in sales in Q1, up 31% compared with the same quarter last year.

Jason Zander, executive vice president of Microsoft Azure

Jason Zander runs Microsoft's Azure cloud computing business.

"Jason has quietly become the most important executive at Microsoft given that Azure has helped power the company's resurgence," Morningstar analyst Dan Romanoff said.

Zander has worked for Microsoft since 1992 and worked directly with Nadella on the nascent cloud unit that's since become a booming business for Microsoft. The company doesn't report revenue figures for Azure but said in its most recent earnings report in October that quarterly revenue grew 48% year over year.

"Nadella was running Azure in its infancy and he brought Zander over to help develop the strategy, product, and grow the business," Romanoff said. "And grow it he has. Zander also played a key role in the embracing of the open source movement, which has been great for the software industry and great for Microsoft."

Phil Spencer, executive vice president of gaming

Phil Spencer runs Microsoft's entire gaming business, from overseeing its line of Xbox gaming consoles, to the online multiplayer service Xbox Live and streaming service Game Pass, and massive game franchises including "Halo,""Minecraft," and "Forza."

Spencer, who started his career at Microsoft as an intern in 1988, has played "a key role in building the division to be the powerhouse it is today," according to Morningstar's Romanoff. 

Nadella made Spencer one of his direct reports in September 2017 and Microsoft's overall gaming revenue reached nearly $11.6 billion in the company's last fiscal year.

Spencer has led Microsoft's multibillion-dollar gaming acquisitions including Mojang and, more recently, Bethesda, Romanoff said, and recently introduced key initiatives including Game Pass.

"Phil has been great for the gaming industry as a whole and great for Microsoft," Romanoff said.

Kurt DelBene, Microsoft's executive vice president of corporate strategy, core services engineering, and operations

Kurt DelBene is in charge of many aspects of Microsoft operations. Microsoft officially describes DelBene's job as "leading the company's cross-engineering and cross-business strategy, execution and planning initiatives."

DelBene joined the company back in 1992 and oversaw the launch of Office 365, Microsoft's cloud-based suite of business applications, before he left in 2013 during former CEO Steve Ballmer's last big reorganization.

During his time away from Microsoft, DelBene was appointed by President Obama in late 2013 to oversee the improvement of the Affordable Care Act website. He also did a short stint as a venture partner for Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group before returning to Microsoft in 2015 to take on his current role. 

DelBene has recently been leading the company's coronavirus response, including sending out emails to the entire company about the crisis between one and five times per week, mostly about global standards for the company.

DelBene is married to US Rep. Susan DelBene, also a former Microsoft executive.

Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of experiences and devices

Rajesh Jha leads Microsoft's Experiences and Devices group, which encompasses a significant part of Microsoft's business, including its line of Surface laptops and tablets and the Microsoft 365 suite.

Introduced in 2017, Microsoft 365 is the company's bundle of business apps that includes Office 365 – cloud-based versions of the company's flagship productivity applications such as Word and Excel – collaboration tools like OneDrive and SharePoint, the Microsoft Teams chat app, and even the Windows 10 operating system itself. 

Teams in particular, has become a growing focus for Microsoft. The chat app experienced a surge of new users amid the pandemic, and the company recently adjusted executive stock bonuses to prioritize the app's growth.

Jha has been on Microsoft's leadership team since 2006, and has worked at Microsoft since he finished graduate school in 2000.

Judson Althoff, executive vice president of worldwide commercial business

Judson Althoff leads Microsoft's worldwide commercial business, which sets the sales strategy for the overall company, and helps make sure customers, partners, and developers are getting the most out of its technology.

Enterprise sales is Microsoft's secret weapon as the company seeks to upend Amazon Web Services in the cloud business. Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood earlier this year called the company's enterprise sales force a "real advantage" in the cloud-computing business, which she said is "an incredibly competitive market with very large well-funded competitors."

Althoff was promoted to the role in 2016 during a reorganization of Microsoft's sales team and he previously served as president of Microsoft North America, a role he held since joining the company in 2013 and which essentially oversaw the company's commercial, public sector, retail, and consumer business in the US and Canada.

Before joining Microsoft, Althoff served as a senior vice president at Oracle, where he worked for 11 years. Similarly, he also managed and supported the company's partners and sales. Prior to that, he worked at EMC. 

Chris Capossela, chief marketing officer and executive vice president of marketing and the consumer business

As the company's chief marketing officer, Chris Capossela runs marketing for all of Microsoft's products and services in both its commercial and consumer businesses.

Capossela has been chief marketing officer since 2011, at which time Microsoft listed accomplishments including: "Under his leadership, the Office business grew from the core suite of applications to also include Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Office 365, with SharePoint Server becoming the fastest-growing server product in Microsoft's history in 2007. Capossela was also instrumental in ushering Office into the cloud with Office Web Apps and Office 365."

Capossela's career at Microsoft started in 1997 when he was hired as Bill Gates' speech assistant, a position he held for two years.

Kevin Scott, chief technology officer and executive vice president of technology and research

Kevin Scott is Microsoft's chief technology officer. Scott joined the company's senior leadership team not long after after Microsoft in 2016 acquired LinkedIn, where he was senior vice president of engineering and operations.

"Kevin's first area of focus is to bring together the world's leading professional network and professional cloud," CEO Nadella said in announcing Scott's 2017 appointment to chief technology officer.

Scott's first task appears to still be underway. Microsoft late last year said it was embarking on what will be a years-long effort to migrate LinkedIn from its own data centers on to the Azure public cloud.

Scott's first stint at Microsoft was in 2001 when he worked as a research intern. He held engineering roles at companies including Google before joining LinkedIn in 2011.

Jean-Philippe Courtois, executive vice president and president of global sales, marketing and operations

Jean-Philippe Courtois runs global sales, marketing, and operations for Microsoft's more than 120 worldwide subsidiaries.

"From cloud services to mixed reality and AI, Courtois is responsible for driving strategic planning, running global operations and shaping growth initiatives in developed and emerging markets," according to the company.

Courtois took on the role in 2016 and originally joined Microsoft in 2000 as the CEO of Microsoft subsidiaries in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Takeshi Numoto, commercial chief marketing officer

Takeshi Numoto became Microsoft's commercial chief marketing officer in March.

That means he's in charge of the company's marketing strategy for the products its sells to businesses, including Azure and commercial cloud products like Office 365.

Numoto has spent nearly 23 years at Microsoft after starting out in 1997 as a business development manager within the company's Windows division.

Dave O'Hara, corporate vice president and chief financial officer of commercial finance

Dave O'Hara is responsible for managing finances for Microsoft's commercial business.

The commercial business, run by Judson Althoff, sets the sales strategy for the overall company, and helps make sure customers, partners, and developers are getting the most out of the company's technology.

O'Hara manages everything from investments, acquisitions, budgeting, and data center operations for the commercial field and engineering groups, according to the company.

O'Hara has worked for Microsoft since 2001, when he joined as vice president of corporate and business development.

Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn CEO

Longtime LinkedIn insider Ryan Roslansky took over as CEO of the Microsoft-owned professional social networking site in June after former CEO Jeff Weiner stepped down after 11 years. 

Roslansky was Weiner's first hire when he replaced cofounder Reid Hoffman to become LinkedIn CEO in 2009. Roslansky helped lead LinkedIn's integration with Microsoft, and LinkedIn's acquisition of online-education site Lynda. Weiner said Roslansky has also played a key role in building LinkedIn's marketing products, as well as its publishing and "influencer" programs.

Roslansky took the reins at a turbulent time for LinkedIn. In his first month as CEO, LinkedIn laid off 960 employees, about 6% of its global workforce, and had to apologize after an internal meeting about racial inequality and bias was interrupted with "appalling" comments from anonymous employees.

More recently, Roslansky led the company's first major redesign in the past five years and the pandemic is bringing record levels of job seekers to the professional social network, according to the company, as nearly 40 million people use LinkedIn each week to search for jobs.

With record numbers of people filing for unemployment, competition for vacancies at the top tech giants is stiff, thanks to highly paid roles and generous benefits and leave policies.

Business Insider spoke with former and current employees, hiring managers, senior recruiters, and experts about landing roles at Google, Amazon, and Microsoft during a crisis and beyond.

The three top tech players look for curious, passionate, and open-minded candidates who are able to pitch their original story beyond degrees, qualifications, and work experience.

But each tech giant has different structures and strategies for the hiring process and looks for different behavioral traits and skill sets in applicants.

Here is what top recruiters, managers, and successful job seekers themselves revealed about how to nail the application process and get hired at Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

How to get hired at Google:

Google's former European recruitment chief breaks down how to get a job at the tech giant

How to get hired at Microsoft:

How to get hired at Microsoft, according to current and former engineers and recruiters

How to get hired at Amazon

How to get a job at Amazon: Amazon's former senior recruiter breaks down how to get a job at the e-commerce giant

4 things to avoid: Suits and generalities: 4 mistakes to avoid if you want to succeed in Amazon's rigorous application process

The 'CAR' technique: How to use the 'CAR' method to nail Amazon's behavioral interview questions, according to a former senior recruiter

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella run two of the most well-known and valuable companies in the world, both of which have fared very well in the pandemic. But when it comes to the business of actually running their respective international business empires, the two execs have very different management styles.

Business Insider obtained an internal list of Nadella's leadership principles, drawn from the strategy that helped the company re-establish itself as a major market player. The company's market value has gone from about $300 billion when he took over as CEO in 2014 to more than $1.6 trillion today.

Nadella's principles, which urges leaders to "create clarity" and "generate energy," are required reading for every new manager at Microsoft, and the subject of an online course at the company. Microsoft has more recently expanded the company's mission statement to include corporate values like innovation, and diversity and inclusion.

Bezos' principles – starting with the "customer obsession" that the company often talks about – are posted on Amazon's career website for prospective job candidates and anyone else to view.

By comparing the two documents, plus some additional insight from Nadella's professional memoir "Hit Refresh," it's easy to see the difference in how they approach the concept of business leadership. 

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On delivering:

Bezos:Deliver results

"Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle."

Nadella:Deliver success

• Drive innovation that people love
• Be boundary-less in seeking solutions
• Tenaciously pursue the right outcomes

"[Leaders] find a way to deliver success, to make things happen. This means driving innovations that people love and are inspired to work on; finding balance between long-term success and short-term wins; and being boundary-less and globally minded in seeking solutions," Nadella wrote in his memoir.

On prioritizing the company over team:

Nadella:Generate energy

"Leaders generate energy, not only on their own teams but across the company. It's insufficient to focus exclusively on your own unit," Nadella wrote in his memoir.

Bezos:Ownership

"Leaders are owners. They think long term and don't sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say 'that's not my job.'"

On personalities:

Bezos:Have backbone; disagree and commit

"Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly."

Are right, a lot

"Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs."

Nadella:Ensure shared understanding

"I don't want to hear that someone is the smartest person in the room. I want to hear them take their intelligence and use it to develop deep shared understanding within teams and define a course of action," Nadella wrote in his memoir.

On simplification:

Nadella:Synthesize the complex

"Leaders take internal and external noise and synthesize a message from it, recognizing the true signal within a lot of noise," Nadella wrote in his memoir.

Bezos:Invent and simplify

"Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by 'not invented here.' As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time."

On action:

Bezos:Bias for action

"Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking."

Nadella:Define a course of action

Nadella believes it's a leader's responsibility to get everyone on the same page and take action together, according to his memoir "Hit Refresh."

On leading a team:

Nadella:Inspire optimism, creativity, and growth

"Leaders need to inspire optimism, creativity, shared commitment, and growth through times good and bad. They create an environment where everyone can do his or her best work. And they build organizations and teams that are stronger tomorrow than today," Nadella wrote in his memoir "Hit Refresh."

Bezos:Earn trust

"Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team's body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best."

Hire and develop the best

"Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice."

Insist on the highest standard

Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.

Dive deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.

Learn and be curious

"Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them."

Bezos' customer obsession:

Bezos: The ultimate leadership principle at Amazon is the notion of "customer obsession."

"Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers."

And prioritizing customers is echoed through his remaining leadership principles.

Think big

"Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers."

Frugality

"Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense."

Nadella's 'changing the culture' at the company:

Nadella: The Microsoft CEO summed up his leadership principles in his memoir "Hit Refresh" by saying "Changing the culture at Microsoft doesn't depend on me, or even on the handful of top leaders I work most closely with. It depends on everyone in the company—including our vast cadre of middle managers who must dedicate themselves to making everyone they work with better, every day."

Microsoft is tying bonuses to employees based on whether they "generate and protect Microsoft trust by modeling integrity," according to internal documents viewed by Business Insider, as the company works to establish itself as a leader in tech-industry ethics.

Microsoft structures compensation so employees receive incentives based on whether they achieve "core priorities." Core priorities are usually role-specific, and Microsoft measures whether an employee has achieved the role's core priorities through "critical indicators of success." 

A Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider that integrity is one of the company's core values, and something that all employees are expected to demonstrate. However, some teams at Microsoft have taken it a step further by emphasizing the concept in performance reviews, which the company said in some cases can include making it a core priority.

The core priority sets the expectation for all roles to "model integrity and ethical behaviors every day," including adhering to completing mandatory compliance trainings, cooperating with audits, and being "proactive in identifying risks inherent to your role and escalate concerns," according to a document viewed by Business Insider.

Other core priorities at Microsoft may be more product-focused, depending on the employee's team and division.  One cloud-related role, for example, is awarded bonuses based on whether the individual helps Microsoft raise monthly active usage for its Teams chat app and "win against Zoom and WebEx for meetings,"according to a document viewed by Business Insider.

Select core priorities, however — such as the companywide shared priority of diversity and inclusion, which Microsoft made part of the bonus structure in 2018— are standard for all employees. 

For the integrity-focused core priority, leaders and people managers are further expected to "foster a healthy culture by recognizing employees for making ethical choices and encouraging them to speak up and share concerns," and to "be skeptical about unexpected deals and results and proactive in identifying risks inherent to your business and escalate concerns," including being "be ready to take tough decision for untrustworthy partners/suppliers and high-risk transactions."

Microsoft didn't respond to a question about what prompted the core priority, but the company, particularly company president Brad Smith, has generally tried to position itself as an ethical tech company. The company has published ethical principles to guide its work in facial recognition technology, and earlier this year divested from a facial recognition startup AnyVision after it was criticized for being an investor.

The core priority also appears to encourage employees to speak up about ethical concerns, as many have in recent months over issues including systemic racism, and Microsoft's decision to engage with the Trump administration on a since-failed deal to acquire TikTok, according to internal discussion viewed by Business Insider. It's unclear, however, if these are the kinds of concerns to which Microsoft's new policy is referring.

Outside of this core priority, Microsoft has for the last several years produced an internal training video series based on its Standards of Business Conduct— a series lauded by employees on social media for its apparently high production values and compelling storylines.

Are you a Microsoft employee or do you have insight to share? Contact reporter Ashley Stewart via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@businessinsider.com).

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is calling for more competition in the tech world — and urging US tech companies to pay close attention to their rivals around the world. 

In an interview with Bloomberg Television's Emily Chang published Wednesday, Nadella said that while US tech companies growing larger in size and scope isn't inherently negative, "competition is good"— particularly from companies outside the US. 

"There is no God-given right for US tech companies to take for granted that there cannot be other tech powers," Nadella said. "All of us in the West Coast of the United States need to be more grounded, because sometimes I think we celebrate our own advances far too much."

He said that US companies should be keeping a close eye on what foreign companies are doing and ensuring that their own technology is relevant, according to Bloomberg.

Nadella also hinted at some of the critiques around companies like Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google, which are all under antitrust scrutiny in the US. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have argued that these Silicon Valley firms have grown rapidly and crushed their competition, resulting in an unfair hold over the market. 

"You need to have a business model that really is aligned with the world doing well," Nadella said. "There are certain categories of products where the unintended consequences of the growth on that category or lack of competition creates issues."

Read more:Experts share their top 7 predictions on what's ahead for Microsoft in 2021, including a potential $10 billion-plus acquisition to take on Salesforce

Nadella has served as Microsoft's CEO since 2014, which means Microsoft's own antitrust issues far predate his tenure. In May 1998, the Department of Justice filed suit against Microsoft, alleging the company had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The suit followed testimony by cofounder and then-CEO Bill Gates before Congress, where he addressed Microsoft's market power and whether the company was abusing it.

A court initially ruled that Microsoft should be broken up into two separate companies, but Microsoft appealed and eventually settled with the US government, agreeing to change its ways. 

While Microsoft has avoided the recent scrutiny of its peers in the US, however, it is facing a possible antitrust probe of its own by the European Union. Last July, workplace chat app company Slack filed suit against Microsoft in EU, accusing it of engaging in anticompetitive behavior by linking its Teams chat app to the popular Office 356 suite.

Nadella downplayed Slack's allegations, telling Bloomberg that Microsoft provides "the most open platform in Windows and even in Office 365."

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A vice president at Slack had a fiery response to comments from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella claiming partial credit for the messaging app's success.

In the interview with Bloomberg Television published on Wednesday, Nadella cited Microsoft's "free access" and lack of recurring developer fees as a major reason for Slack's success, saying, "Would Slack have even existed if it was not for the free access they had on top of, say, the Windows platform?"

Slack certainly thinks it would have.

In an emailed statement to Insider, Jonathan Prince, the messaging app's vice president of communications and policy, said "the idea that Slack wouldn't exist without the company that has tried to copy and then destroy it is as silly as it is irrelevant."

Read more: These charts show how use of Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom has skyrocketed thanks to the remote work boom

"The only relevant question is whether Microsoft is illegally abusing its dominance and tying Teams to its apps and services in order to protect its chokehold on enterprise software and prevent the discovery and adoption of new and innovative tools," Prince said.

Slack filed a complaint last year with the European Commission accusing Microsoft of antitrust activity, Insider reported. The complaint stated that Microsoft's bundling of its Teams chat software, a Slack competitor, with the Office 365 operating system, was an unfair and anticompetitive practice.

"It's an especially brazen bait and switch for Mr. Nadella to ask us to ignore their current illegal behavior because their past illegal behavior doesn't include an attempt to block the launch of Slack on PCs back in 2013," Prince added. 

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

SEE ALSO: Microsoft's CEO quietly took credit for Slack's success as the go-to workplace chat app: 'Would Slack have even existed' if not for Windows?

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Microsoft tried to snap up the online pinboard platform Pinterest in recent weeks, people familiar with the matter told The Financial Times on Wednesday.

The negotiations are not active, the people said. Microsoft's acquisition strategy is focused on collecting a range of active online communities, which it can run on its cloud computing platform, Azure, they added.

Microsoft's acquisition of Pinterest, valued at $51 billion, would have been its largest deal. It would also be twice as big as its purchase of LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion.

Pinterest didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Microsoft declined to comment.

Pinterest, the social media site where people "pin" images and seek inspiration in home decor, food and fashion, has hinted in the past it wants to remain independent.

The social media platform, founded in 2009, has boomed during the pandemic as customers have spent more time online. Over the past year, Pinterest has gained more than 100 million monthly active users and now has more than 450 million users around the world.

Read more:Microsoft still hasn't told retail employees where they'll be required to work and some are panicking, leaked discussion shows

On Friday, Pinterest reported it turned in revenues of $706 million in the fourth quarter of 2020, beating analyst estimates by $58 million.

The last time Microsoft tried to get its hands on a popular social media company was in 2020, when it was in the race to buy Chinese app TikTok. But its bid was rejected by TikTok's owner, ByteDance.

SEE ALSO: Microsoft's Satya Nadella says the US tech industry needs to be more open to foreign competition: 'I think we celebrate our own advances far too much'

SEE ALSO: Slack says Microsoft's CEO claiming credit for the app's success is 'as silly as it is irrelevant'

SEE ALSO: Microsoft's CEO quietly took credit for Slack's success as the go-to workplace chat app: 'Would Slack have even existed' if not for Windows?

SEE ALSO: What is Microsoft Exchange? Here's what you need to know about the business-oriented email server

SEE ALSO: The inside story of Pinterest's toxic workplace that caused CEO Ben Silbermann to admit to employees, 'I'm embarrassed'

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NOW WATCH: July 15 is Tax Day — here's what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sees significant change ahead for the cloud-computing industry.

Nadella laid out what he called the "five key attributes that will drive this next generation of innovation in the cloud" on Tuesday during the company's virtual Ignite conference.

In short, he said believed the future of cloud computing would be shaped by a radical change in computing architecture moving from data centers to local devices, an explosion in "volume, variety, and velocity of data," and deliberate steps to enable more creators, expand economic opportunity, and create more trust in technology.

Edge computing and even more data will drive change

The first of those factors is "ubiquitous and decentralized computing." Nadella outlined how he believed a radical change in computing architecture was on the horizon, thanks to an ever-expanding set of connected devices that process data locally, moving from the cloud to what's called the "edge."

Edge computing means processing data where it's collected, instead of off-site in the cloud. Nadella is not alone in this prediction. Many companies, including the cloud-market leader Amazon Web Services, are preparing for the expansion of edge computing.

Next, the expansion of edge computing will mean even more growth in computing capacity: "Volume, variety, and velocity of data will go to explosive growth in the cloud and in particularly at the edge," Nadella said.

The explosion in data will make data privacy, governance, and provenance more important than ever, Nadella said, especially as that data is increasingly used in machine learning and artificial-intelligence applications.

"Business logic will move from being code that is written to being code that is learned from data, creating a complete new generation of business process and productivity systems," he said.

Tech needs to become more expansive and inclusive

Nadella also advocated for what he called the "democratization of creation," which means expanding skills, tools, platforms, connections, and collaboration across communities so "everyone can create, whether it's building a virtual world, students working on an assignment with short-form videos, knowledge workers creating formulas and spreadsheets for developers, writing code, or domain experts using local tools to build applications," he said.

(To this end, Microsoft on Tuesday introduced a new developer platform for mixed reality called Microsoft Mesh.)

Democratizing creation will expand economic opportunity, Nadella said.

"We need to define productivity much more broadly inclusive of collaboration, learning, and well-being to drive career advancement for every worker, including frontline and knowledge workers, as well as for new graduates and those who are in the workforce today," he said.

Finally, the future of the cloud will be shaped by whether technology companies can inspire trust.

"Fundamentally, a technology provider should succeed only when it helps the world around it succeed. No one wants to build technology that rapidly scales but breaks the world around us," Nadella said. "No customer wants to be dependent on a provider that sells them technology on one hand and competes with them on the other."

Nadella didn't mention its top cloud rival, Amazon, by name, but a common refrain in the tech industry is that retailers, and anybody else who might compete with Amazon, are reluctant to sign on with its cloud business because of perceived rivalry. Microsoft has made this comparison between itself and its competitors before. Tom Keane, a cloud executive, recently said what he thought set Microsoft apart in the industry was "trust."

Nadella also called for ethical principles to govern the design and development of technology, "with the design intent to protect the fundamental rights of all people, including privacy and strengthening these institutions we all depend on for our livelihoods and well-being."

Microsoft has done this by publishing its ethical principles for facial recognition but has also been criticized by some of its own employees for selling the technology to law-enforcement agencies.

Are you a Microsoft employee, or do you have insight to share? Contact reporter Ashley Stewart via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@businessinsider.com)

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Google accused Microsoft of attempting to divert public attention away from a major Microsoft server hack.

Kent Walker, Google's head of global affairs, said in a blog post Microsoft is attacking his firm to divert attention away from the massive hack on Microsoft Exchange servers. The statement came ahead of a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on competition among news outlets at which Microsoft testified.

Microsoft president Brad Smith said in a testimony ahead of a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing that Google "dominates" digital advertising and requires news outlets use the tech firm's tools to operate.

"Microsoft was warned about the vulnerabilities in their system, knew they were being exploited, and are now doing damage control while their customers scramble to pick up the pieces from what has been dubbed the Great Email Robbery," Walker said. "So maybe it's not surprising to see them dusting off the old diversionary Scroogled playbook."

Microsoft announced on March 3 a Chinese-sponsored group Hafnium had hacked into its Exchange email servers, impacting an estimated 100,000 organizations globally and 30,000 in the US. Cybersecurity experts warn the attack could be "1,000 times more crippling" than the well-publicized Solar Winds attack. 

Microsoft was recently grilled by US senators over the massive Solar Winds hack that infiltrated Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies.

Smith said a lack of competition among search engines results in Google acting as a gatekeeper for news outlets. Microsoft-owned Bing has had trouble competing with Google's search engine, which controls 81% of all general search queries in the US on desktop and 94% on mobile, per the House Judiciary subcommittee.

Google's Walker said Microsoft owns also platforms where news is consumed, like LinkedIn, MSN, and Microsoft News, but gives less financial support to outlets.

The two tech firms took aim at each other recently after Australia passed a law requiring news tech giants to pay news publishers before displaying content in their search results. 

Microsoft supported the law, and suggested Bing could replace Google as the primary search engine in Australia. Walker responded to Microsoft's comments by accusing the firm of imposing an "unworkable levy" to gain better market access. 

Microsoft was not immediately available for additional comment.

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Microsoft will open up its US headquarters to more employees by the end of this month, the company announced Monday. 

Beginning March 29, Microsoft employees who typically work at the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters or nearby offices will have the option to return to those campuses some or all of the time. Employees will also be allowed to continue working remotely if they wish, Microsoft said in a blog post announcing the update.

"We've been closely monitoring local health data for months and have determined that the campus can safely accommodate more employees on-site while staying aligned to Washington state capacity limits," Kurt DelBene, Microsoft's head of corporate strategy, wrote. 

Microsoft offices in 21 countries around the world have also added additional workers, with about 20% of its global workforce working at an office, according to the blog post. 

"Our goal is to give employees further flexibility, allowing people to work where they feel most productive and comfortable, while also encouraging employees to work from home as the virus and related variants remain concerning," DelBene wrote.

Microsoft said in October that it would extend its work-from-home policy until July 6, 2021 "at the earliest." The company also announced that month that its policy going forward will allow most employees to work remotely at least half of the time — employees who wish to work remotely full time or relocate may do so with manager approval. 

According to a survey Microsoft conducted among those who have already returned to the office, it seems many employees currently prefer some sort of hybrid work schedule: About half of those who have gone back to the office are spending 25% of their time there, DelBene wrote in the blog post.

Read more: Internal documents show how Microsoft's flexible work-from-home plan will work, including getting approval from a manager to work remotely over 50% of the time or relocate

Microsoft joins many major tech companies in planning for a hybrid workforce. Salesforce announced last month that it will provide employees three new ways to work going forward. Most employees will adopt a "flex" schedule where they'll report to the office up to three days each week for tasks that are more challenging to do over video calls, like team collaboration, customer meetings, and presentations. 

Andy Jassy, the current CEO of Amazon Web Services who will take over as Amazon's chief executive in the third quarter of this year, told CNBC in December that he predicts most people will adopt a hybrid work model. Jassy said he expects the future of work to be "hot offices" where employees decide when to come in and then reserve a desk. 

Google appears likely to take some sort of hybrid approach as well: CEO Sundar Pichai said previously that he doesn't think "the future is just 100% remote."

"We firmly believe that in-person, being together, having that sense of community, is super important for whenever you have to solve hard problems, you have to create something new," he said.

Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, said last year that he believes most employees still want a desk at a physical office versus working from home on a permanent basis. 

"In the Seattle region, where we have sent a lot of people home," Nadella said, "we're realizing people would rather have workspace at work once the COVID-19 crisis goes away."

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Microsoft's official internal organizational chart reveals the top 30 executives who run the company's cloud business under Satya Nadella.

Led by longtime executive VP Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's Cloud + AI group includes the Microsoft Azure public cloud computing business, cloud-based products such as customer relationship management software Dynamics 365, the company's artificial intelligence platform, and code-storage subsidiary GitHub.

Insider identified Microsoft's top cloud executives and the people who report directly to them as of 2021 by reviewing a copy of Microsoft's official organizational chart, which is not public but made available to employees. Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Nadella created the Cloud + AI group through a reorganization in 2018 and put Guthrie in charge. More recently, Microsoft last week confirmed to ZDNet another reorganization in the Cloud + AI unit that shifted responsibilities between executives.

On the post-reorg chart Insider viewed, corporate vice president of Microsoft's AI platform Eric Boyd no longer appears as one of Guthrie's direct reports, though Microsoft has yet to make an announcement about any changes affecting him. Microsoft and Boyd did not respond to requests about whether he has been reassigned, or if he has plans to leave the company.

The Azure business itself is run by Jason Zander, who has worked for Microsoft since 1992 and was promoted to executive vice president in 2018. Zander worked directly with Nadella on the nascent cloud unit that's since become a booming business for Microsoft — and the leading competitor to market-dominating Amazon Web Services.

"Jason has quietly become the most important executive at Microsoft given that Azure has helped power the company's resurgence," Morningstar analyst Dan Romanoff recently told Business Insider. "Nadella was running Azure in its infancy and he brought Zander over to help develop the strategy, product, and grow the business. And grow it he has."

Notably, he also appears to be the only Microsoft executive vice president who does not report directly to the CEO. He sits below Guthrie on the company's org chart.

Microsoft's overall commercial cloud business – which includes its Microsoft Azure cloud computing business, the Microsoft 365 suite of cloud software applications and other services – reached $16.7 billion in the company's most recent quarter, up 34% compared to the same quarter last year. The company booked $43.1 billion of total revenue in the same quarter.

Got a tip? Email Ashley Stewart at astewart@insider.com.

Meet the 30 people who run Microsoft's cloud under CEO Satya Nadella:

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Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of the Insider Tech newsletter, where we break down the biggest news in tech, including:

• Intel's $20 billion comeback plan
• Microsoft's executive org chart
• Mark Zuckerberg talks misinformation

I'm your host Alexei Oreskovic. Hit me up with your thoughts, tips, rants and raves at aoreskovic@businessinsider.com.

Did someone forward this newsletter to you? Sign up here.

Soundtrack: This week's newsletter has been specially designed to be consumed while listening to Blur's "Bettlebum."

This week: Back to the '90s with Microsoft and Intel

It's been a long time since Intel and Microsoft — the much-feared "Wintel" duopoly of old — dominated business headlines and captivated the world's attention in the same 24-hour period.

And yet this week felt like a return to the '90s as the two tech giants' latest moves had the industry buzzing. Let's start with Intel, the fallen chip champion, which unveiled a big comeback plan on Tuesday.

• After losing its chip manufacturing edge, Intel has been stuck in a business-model identity crisis. Should it split its manufacturing and design operations? Should it produce chips for other companies? Should it outsource its own production? Intel CEO Pat Gelisinger, just one month in the top job, gave his answer on Tuesday: Yes to all of the above!
• Intel will double down on chip manufacturing, pouring $20 billion to build two new fabs in Arizona. The fabs will produce the most advanced chips for Intel, and for outside customers — a shrewd move that allows Intel to benefit from US and European anxieties about dependence on China, and to (eventually) tap into all the new chip buyers that have created today's shortages.
• But Intel will also use outside contract manufacturers, like TSMC, to produce some of its own chips. There's something for everyone, though it still may not be enough to bring back Intel's glory days, as Rosalie Chan reports.

Microsoft meanwhile has already gone through its reinvention. Under Satya Nadella's now seven-year reign as CEO, the company has thrived by focusing on business customers and cloud computing. 

• That's why so many people were scratching their heads on learning that Microsoft is considering plunking down $10 billion to buy Discord, a video game streaming platform. The potential deal falls into an odd basket of headscratching acquisitions (and near-acquisitions) by Nadella that include Minecraft, Linkedin and a failed effort to acquire TikTok. 
• Perhaps unconsciously, Nadella channeled his predecessor former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "Creation, creation, creation"he told Bloomberg in an interview last month, describing his view that internet creators will drive growth in the cloud business. Nadella's phrasing, if not his delivery, was reminiscent of Ballmer's meme-famous war chant from two decades ago of "Developers, Developers, Developers!"
• To get inside Microsoft, check out our exclusive org chart of the company's 175 most powerful people.

File under curious...

Goodbye Vocl, Hello Frank. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's social network hasn't launched yet, but it's already gone through a name change. Frank, as the service will be called, has nothing to do with frankfurters or Frank Sinatra. The name signifies the site's antipathy to political correctness and its devotion to "forthright and sincere" expression.

WeWork's SPAC Shaq attack. The office space sharing business has only gotten uglier in the 18 months since WeWork scrapped its IPO, with the pandemic turning downtown business centers into ghosttowns. But WeWork will get its public listing after all, thanks to the SPAC boom. The company will merge with BowX Acquisition Corp, a blank-check company that counts basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal as an advisor, in a deal that values WeWork at $9 billion — about one quarter of its $47 billion valuation in 2019.

Better than Zoom. Coronavirus vaccines have put the end of lockdowns in sight. But for those who've decided they actually enjoy staying indoors, the cloisered life won't have to mean taking a vow of celibacy according to London-based Raspberry Dream Labs. The company is developing a virtual reality set up that delivers sounds, visuals and scents, as well as haptic pulses that provide a sense of being touched. Pandemic or not, the company believes the future of intimacy is remote.

Quote of the week:

"I don't think we can expect that any platform will find every instance of harmful content. I think we should hold the platforms to be responsible for building generally effective systems of moderating this content."

— Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Thursday's Congressional hearing responding to a question about whether he should personally be held liable for damages caused by misinformation on Facebook.

Recommended Readings:

We identified the 194 most powerful people at Google under CEO Sundar Pichai. Check out our exclusive org chart.

Insiders say incoming Amazon CEO Andy Jassy picked a close ally when he hired Adam Selipsky to run its $51 billion cloud business — and it could make all the difference

Europe's unicorn founders and investors want to make it easier to spread wealth and compete with Silicon Valley

LASHINSKY: After almost 6 years and billions of dollars, Google med-tech spinoff Verily is still a scattershot jumble of moonshots

Coinbase has become a 'breeding ground' for startup founders, with the company's help and sometimes money, former employees say

A researcher turned down a $60k grant from Google because it ousted 2 top AI ethics leaders: 'I don't think this is going to blow over'

Not necessarily in tech:

Apollo's hard-driving culture is extreme even by Wall Street standards, and it's burning through young workers. Here's why $450,000-plus pay and rules to ban weekend emails aren't enough to keep them happy.

Sponsor content:

This startup CEO used his experience as a product designer for one of Japan's top automakers to build a solution that is reshaping personal mobility

This woman CEO started a company that uses AI to eliminate mundane tasks and eventually achieve a 4-hour workday

Thanks for reading, and if you like this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues they can sign up here to receive it.

— Alexei

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NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

• Microsoft is closing in on a $2 trillion market capitalization.
• It would be only the second US company after Apple to pass that threshold.
• The computing titan's shares surged 60% in 2020 and are up another 17% this year.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Microsoft could soon become only the second American company ever to command a $2 trillion market capitalization.

The computing giant's stock price climbed more than 1% on Thursday, boosting its market cap to a record high of $1.9 trillion. If the shares rise another 5%, Microsoft would join Apple in the exclusive $2 trillion club.

Microsoft is approaching the milestone thanks to its stock's recent outperformance. Its shares are up about 17% this year after leaping 60% in 2020. Moreover, they have surged more than five-fold since Satya Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer as the company's CEO in 2014.

Despite its recent gains, Microsoft isn't threatening to replace Apple as the most valuable US public company just yet. The iPhone maker's market cap stood at $2.2 trillion on Thursday, and briefly topped $2.4 trillion in January.

Amazon and Alphabet, which boast market caps of around $1.7 trillion and $1.5 trillion respectively, are also in the running to be the next $2 trillion company.

Microsoft, founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975, has become one of the most powerful companies in the world. Its key products include its Windows operating system, Office software suite, Azure cloud-computing service, Surface tablets, and Xbox gaming consoles. It's also made several billion-dollar acquisitions including Skype, Minecraft-maker Mojang, and LinkedIn over the past decade.

Read more:Goldman Sachs handpicks 40 stocks that will enjoy bigger earnings growth than Wall Street expects in 2021

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Microsoft has agreed to buy the AI and voice communications firm Nuance for $19.7 billion.

The deal, expected to close at the end of the year, would value Nuance at $56 per share, implying a premium of 23% to the stock's closing price on April 9.

Nuance is Microsoft's second largest acquisition after its $24 billion purchase of LinkedIn in 2016.

Nuance's speech recognition engine is the basis for Apple's voice assistant Siri, and the company has developed Dragon Naturally Speaking voice technology products.

Microsoft intends to integrate Nuance's technology into its healthcare-specific cloud strategy. More than half of physicians and 77% of US hospitals use Nuance's technology, according to a release. Revenue for Nuance's Healthcare Cloud grew 37% year-over-year at the end of 2020.

"Nuance provides the AI layer at the healthcare point of delivery and is a pioneer in the real-world application of enterprise AI," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement. "Together, with our partner ecosystem, we will put advanced AI solutions into the hands of professionals everywhere to drive better decision-making and create more meaningful connections, as we accelerate growth of Microsoft Cloud in Healthcare and Nuance."

Nadella told CNBC he expects the pandemic to accelerate the "digital transformation" of healthcare, and improving health outcomes will require help from tech companies.

"Not only will we be able to serve all the providers with everything we do in Microsoft 365 dynamics, 365 Azure, but Nuance will be able to help us deliver these AI-first solutions for doctors and radiologists and overall clinical decision support in partnership with the rest of the ecosystem," Nadella said.

Nuance CEO Mark Benjamin, who will remain at the helm after the deal with Microsoft closes, said the partnership will allow the firm to hyper-scale existing technology on a global scale and provide better access to care.

Benjamin added that he hopes to decrease burnout among physicians by reducing the amount of charting, which tends to add two hours of work per one hour of patient care.

"We believe that our solutions coupled with Microsoft's platform and capabilities will bring actually the practice of medicine back to that intimate physician, patient interaction, and really reduce that administrative burden," Benjamin told CNBC.

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Microsoft employees in an internal companywide poll were overwhelmingly positive in their responses to questions about inclusion and "work group health"— a broad topic that includes work-life balance, career development, and similar matters — but less so about whether they were getting a "good deal" by working there, according to results viewed by Insider.

Microsoft conducts the annual survey, called "MS Poll," to find out how employees feel about topics such as leadership, work-life balance, and compensation. The company did not respond to a request to confirm or comment on the results.

Nearly 132,000 of 149,000 eligible employees responded to this year's poll, which is a nearly 88% turnout, according to an internal document. The company sorts questions into categories and shares which percentage of employees answered favorably (usually either "agree" or "strongly agree") to the questions in a category and discloses to employees how their teams and organizations responded to each topic relative to the company overall.

The category with the most favorable responses was the "Inclusion Index," which Microsoft defines in one document as "authenticity, belonging, belief in the commitment to diversity." That category received 90% favorable responses companywide.

The categories with the fewest favorable responses were "performance," with 66% favorable responses, and "deal," with 73% favorable responses. Microsoft didn't define either of these categories in the results viewed by Insider, but "deal" appeared to include a statement that said, "I have a good deal at Microsoft (i.e. there is a reasonable balance between what I contribute to Microsoft and what I get in return)."

Last year, the MS Poll found employees were growing less satisfied with pay. At the time, 55% of employees surveyed said their combined salary, bonuses, and equity was competitive with similar jobs at other companies, according to sources, down from 57% in 2019, 61% in 2018, and 65% in 2017. The results viewed by Insider for the 2021 edition of MS Poll did not include companywide responses for any pay-specific questions.

Meanwhile, 84% of employees answered favorably to questions in the "Work Group Health Index," which Microsoft defined as career development, immediate manager, work-group climate, and work-life flexibility. It's unclear how the pandemic-forced shift to remote work affect the results because Microsoft changed what was included in the index.

Across the company, 81% of employees answered favorably to questions in the "Engagement Index," defined as enthusiasm, advocacy, intent to stay, and 79% of employees answered favorably to "Learning Index" questions about learning experiences and environment.

One category, the "Leadership Excellence Index," is administered only to high-level Microsoft employees, qualified as level 65 and above. Microsoft has a hierarchy of levels from 59 to 80, and level 65 is where the top tier of the company starts with the esteemed title of "principal."

A total of 77% of these employees responded positively to questions in this category, which Microsoft defined as "create clarity, generate energy, and deliver success." It's unclear exactly what goes into the category, but those are CEO Satya Nadella's leadership principles.

Are you a Microsoft employee? Contact reporter Ashley Stewart via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@businessinsider.com).

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Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations for quarterly revenue on Tuesday, as the software giant benefited from demand for its cloud-based services during the pandemic-induced remote working and learning.

The global shift to work from home has spurred demand for cloud-based computing, which is an advantage for Microsoft as well as its rivals including Alphabet's Google Cloud and Amazon's cloud unit.

Microsoft said revenue in its "Intelligent Cloud" segment rose 23% to $15.1 billion, with 50% growth in Azure. Analysts had expected a 46.3% growth, according to consensus data from Visible Alpha.

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On a constant currency basis, Azure revenue growth was 46% in the quarter.

Revenue from its personal computing division, which includes Windows software and Xbox gaming consoles, rose 19% to $13 billion, Microsoft said.

The company's revenue rose 19% to $41.7 billion in the third quarter ended March 31, beating analysts' estimates of $41.03 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

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